Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Petition: Appoint An LGBT Youth Advisor

Caleb Laieski, a courageous young man who left school at the age of 16 in order to become a youth advocate for LGBT teens, has taken his crusade against bullying all the way to Congress. When I first met Caleb, he was getting ready for the day to lobby Congresspeople for anti-bullying measures.

Now he's handing around an online petition urging the President to appoint an LGBT Youth Advisor at the White House in order to work on issues that specifically affect high-school age LGBTs:

Urge the Obama Administration to appoint a youth advisor to work with the administration on the everyday emotional and complex issues that LGBT youth face.

In the past couple of years, our country has seen a tremendous swing in regards to the acceptance of minority groups, but research and statistics still show that LGBT youth are going through personal struggles both at school and at home. Some of these struggles consist of bullying, drug abuse, homelessness, isolation and even suicide.

According to PFLAG, approximately 30% of gay and lesbian youth drop out of school due to hardships from physical and verbal abuse. This statistic is caused by the lack of support and intervention for LGBT students by teachers and school administrators. Additionally, the few teachers that would like to intervene often do not have the proper training on how to intervene in anti-LGBT bullying.